Pillow Talk
by AlmeidaFluff
Summary: Lighthearted, high-fluff Tony & Michelle fanfic. Takes place post-S2, about a month into their marriage. Something that's bugging Michelle is keeping Tony awake nights, too. Enjoy.


Pillow Talk

Tony squinted hard and scanned the room, his eyes still heavy with sleep.

"Michelle? What are you doing up?"

From across the darkened room he could see the silhouette of her petite frame standing by the window. The sheer drapes had caught a breeze from the couple of inches of open window and were billowing in frenzy around her. He glanced at his watch. It was three forty-three.

"I didn't mean to wake you, honey," she whispered. "Go back to sleep."

Instead, he tossed the covers aside and grumpily made his way across the room, coming up behind her and engulfing her in a warm embrace.

"You're shivering, Michelle. Come back to bed. How long have you been standing here?"

"I don't know. Not long," she said. "I couldn't sleep."

She turned around and burrowed into his arms, pressing her cheek against his silky chest. His skin felt so warm against her own. She hadn't realized until that moment how cool the room had become just from the few minutes the window had been open.

"You feeling okay?" he asked, his hand reflexively moving up to her forehead. None too surprising, it was just as bone-cold as the rest of her. He reached around and pushed the window firmly shut.

"C'mon," he said, guiding her by the shoulders over to the bed. He held the sheet and blanket up until she had settled in beneath them, then crossed over to his side and buried himself back under the covers. The spot he'd been sleeping in for hours was still blissfully warm. He shifted his body back to create some room and drew her in.

She sighed, contentedly. Tony's body radiated the perfect level of heat, she thought. It was as though her marriage certificate had come replete with a custom-made electric blanket.

With Michelle's back now snug against his chest and her thighs following the curve of his own, Tony did a final tug-and-tuck of the comforter around their shoulders, then laid his head back down to rest.

"Tell me what's bothering you," he said with a deep, relaxed sigh, brushing away a couple of curls that had snagged against his bristly beard. "You know you're not gonna fall asleep 'til you do."

Michelle smiled to herself. They had only back from their honeymoon and living together for a few weeks now, but already he was reading her the way old married couples do.

"It's nothing, really," she assured him in her best convincing tone, though doubting it would assuage his curiosity for very long. Sure enough, only moments later he was propping himself up on an elbow and peering over at the side of her face.

"If it were nothing, I wouldn't have had to get out of bed in the middle of the night," he pointed out in a calm, soothing tone. "So let's hear it, sweetie. This is the second night this week I had to go looking for you."

She laid in silence for a few seconds, enjoying the sensation of his fingertips manipulating some wayward curls back behind her ear.

"The second night?"

"Tuesday ... when I found you in the kitchen, remember? I nearly gashed my foot open on that monstrosity in the hallway..."

"You stepped on a pin," she chuckled, recalling the holy hell he had raised, as though he had impaled his foot on a railroad spike. "And that 'monstrosity,'" she added, "is the sewing machine that belonged to my great grandmother. It's a valuable antique, you know."

"Yeah, well, it's gonna be the most valuable antique in the junkyard real soon if I crash into it one more time," he grumbled, invoking the head-of-the-household attitude of Michelle's favorite sitcom husband, Ralph Kramden of "The Honeymooners." He beamed proudly at the giggly response he knew it would elicit. He loved how easily she laughed at his humor, no matter how lame. The sound of her laughter charmed him to no end. It was a sexy blend of girlishness and confident womanhood, perfectly encapsulating her two distinctly different personas: the lighter, less secure side that she revealed to him at home, and the serious, consummate professional she presented at the office.

A few more seconds passed in silence before he took another whack at it.

"You're not still upset about the Richardson's dog, are you?" he asked.

"No, I'm over that," she said in a semi-yawn. "You were right. He was old. It was his time."

"Uh-huh," he replied, still not buying a word of it. It was the excuse she had offered up the other night when he'd found her cleaning the refrigerator at all hours. "You never even liked that dog, Michelle," he gently reminded her.

"Of course I did," she lied. "I like all dogs."

"Sweetheart, he growled at you every time you attempted to pet him," he said, flashing back to one particularly embarrassing event when he had reflexively drawn his weapon after the dog, with no provocation, had snarled and lunged at Michelle. The elderly Richardsons, who suddenly found themselves staring helplessly at the barrel of a .44 aimed directly at their beloved Butchie's head, never greeted Tony in quite the same way after that.

"Well," Michelle countered, thinking fast, "you growl at me, too, but that never means anything, does it?"

"I only growl when I'm writing the bills out," he said, gently scrolling the letters b-u-l-l-s-h-o-o-t-e-r across her shoulders with his fingertip. "And it means you've been hitting the credit cards too hard. But all that's beside the point, isn't it?"

She sighed in resignation. He was intent upon interrogating the truth out of her this time, she knew.

"It's nothing, honey, really" she said, biding her time. "It's silly."

She could feel her cheeks beginning to burn and was grateful that the darkness would conceal it from him. He always teased her mercilessly about her blushing, which only made her blush even more profusely. It was a vicious cycle.

"Not so silly that it doesn't have you roaming the halls at night," he replied, cupping his hand over her shoulder and easing her over onto her back. He laid a heavy arm to rest across her waist and waited patiently while she stalled a little longer, rolling her eyes back and forth across the ceiling.

"Okay," she finally relented, "but I warned you — it's silly."

"Go on," he said.

"Well," she sighed, still staring at the ceiling, "if you have to know, it's this pillow, actually."

"Your pillow?"

"Yes, well, that's the thing. It's not just my pillow, is it? Or only my pillow, perhaps I should say... Or even our pillow, when you stop to think about it... You know?"

Tony stared down at her blankly with arched eyebrows and a creased brow. His mind was racing. No, he didn't know. In fact, he didn't have a clue what she was talking about. He was almost sorry he had even asked. He had never been very good at translating female-speak into English. The only expertise he'd ever mastered along these lines was facial expressions: He'd always been blessed with the ability to don a look that would convince a woman, at least temporarily, that he not only perfectly understood what she was saying, but was wholly sympathetic to her problem, to boot. It was a mixed blessing, however, because while it usually bought him the needed time to figure out what, indeed, she was even talking about, it invariably encouraged her to share even more convoluted, indiscernible thoughts with him down the road.

Now on the spot, with his bride gazing up in amazement at how lucky she'd been to find a man so keyed into her feelings, the best he could figure was that Michelle missed her own pillow — the one she had slept on for years, in her own bed, in her own apartment.

In retrospect, they probably should've been more careful when they'd weeded the contents of two fully furnished apartments down to one. But theirs had been a runaway romance, with Tony popping the question right on the heels of their first date, and the wedding following only mere weeks later, courtesy of his mom, the professional social butterfly. Amanda Almeida ("Try saying that three times fast," was the standard family joke) was well known for her ability to organize a first-class soirée at the drop of a hat. As wife to an international businessman for decades now, entertaining prospective clients had always been an integral part of her life. Organizing events, from large and splashy to small and intimate, was something she could do in her sleep at this point.

Thrilled with the news of their son's engagement, and head-over-heels with her stunning daughter-in-law-to-be, Amanda, with the grateful couple's blessing, had wasted no time in pulling her cadre of caters and service providers together, with her efforts eventuating in an exquisitely tasteful, elegant wedding and reception, held at the perfect location: the Almeida's own palatial estate, where Tony had lived from the time he was a young boy until he'd gone off to college.

Knowing the likelihood that his Mom would eagerly volunteer her services, Tony had broached the subject with Michelle the night he had proposed to her. Much to his relief, Michelle was all for it. She had already been mulling the idea, herself, of hiring a wedding planner, given the demands of their jobs and how routinely they would find themselves having to cancel and reschedule appointments. Trying to plan a wedding under such circumstances was a nightmare waiting to happen, Michelle had feared.

But even with Amanda coordinating every last detail, Michelle and Tony had still been left with the daunting task of dividing their dozens of duplicate household items — coffee makers, vacuums, silverware, bath towels, DVDs, dishes, and everything in between — into "keeper" and "giveaway" piles, the latter of which they had planned to contribute to a local charity. Since Michelle's queen-sized linens weren't even going to fit Tony's king-sized mattress, she had assigned them all to the charity pile, deciding at the last minute to toss in the matching bed pillows, as well.

Michelle sighed and turned herself onto her side again.

"I told you it was silly," she said over her shoulder.

"Nah, it's not silly, honey," he reassured her.

"Sure it is," she replied, bashfully. "I mean, listen to me. I sound like a jealous schoolgirl..."

Huh?

"Jealous," did she say? What had he missed? How had jealousy suddenly become a part of the conversation? His palms began to moisten as his mind leapt back to "only my pillow" and "just my pillow" and "even our pillows" ... Geeziz, why couldn't women just spit out a problem like guys did? Just slap it on the table, hash it out, and go to the bar for a beer. It was such an easier process than the swami routine he was forever finding himself embroiled in.

"I mean, it's not like you had no life before me, after all," Michelle added as an afterthought, sliding her hands between her head and the pillow, as if trying to create a physical wall of separation.

Tony's eyes widened. Pillow. Jealous. Life before me. Bingo. Michelle was thinking of other women whose heads had previously rested upon that very same pillow, which she — the wife — had been sleeping on for weeks, now, ever since they'd returned from their honeymoon. Tony also had no doubt that the woman foremost on Michelle's mind was Nina, the last "significant other" he had dated, and had even briefly contemplated marrying, as Michelle knew.

It was all making sense to him now: A blurb had recently appeared in the papers about a controversial ruling that Nina's lawyers had successfully litigated at the appellate level, which legal eagles speculated would inevitably advance to the Supreme Court. Michelle, a voracious reader, would have obviously seen it, which would naturally have sparked reminders of the role Nina had once played in Tony's life — or, more to the point, his bed. This bed. Their bed.

It was a feeling Tony himself could relate to. He had experienced similar pangs of jealousy, smack in the middle of making torrid love to Michelle during the one and only night they had ever spent in her bed. Some innocent, innocuous thing she'd said had prompted Tony to realize that some other man, at some point or another, had to have made love to Michelle — his Michelle — right in that very same bed. The thought was enough to drive him to distraction. He had even woken up irritable the next morning. Thereafter, whether consciously or subconsciously, he had always managed to come up with reasons to end their evenings together at his place instead of hers.

The Richardson's dog, my foot, he thought back, wincing briefly at the memory it conjured of the sewing pin. The good news, of course, was that the problem would be easy enough to remedy.

He leaned in and kissed her cheek, then coaxed her around to him until they were face-to-face. He could tell she was blushing from the warmth of her cheek, but decided it probably wasn't the best time to tease her about it.

"Y'know, I was just thinking," he casually announced.

"I hope you didn't hurt yourself," she playfully deadpanned. He pretended to ignore her, happy to see her friskiness finally beginning to emerge again.

"First of all," he said, drawing her snug against his chest with one hand and brushing the demon pillow off the side of the bed with the other, "I think you and I should share my pillow tonight." She chuckled at how smoothly he had executed the move.

"That sounds kind of romantic," she purred, seductively. He gave her cheek another light peck, then rolled himself onto his back, taking her lithe body along with him.

"And then, tomorrow, after work," he went on, "I think we should stop in at that place, on Fremont, and order one of those mattresses they're always singing about."

"Ah, yes, with the catchy music they've got you whistling along to," she teased, sensually wiggling her body into a more comfortable position on top of him.

"And then," he proceeded, wholly aware of what she and her wiggly little posterior were up to, "I think we should stop over at that shopping mall where you and your girlfriends are always spending my money, and pick up some new sheets and pillows and blankets, and stuff, to go with it."

"The whole nine yards?" she beamed. "Do I get to pick it all out, too?"

"Of course. That's women's work," he said facetiously, summoning his head-of-the-household voice again. "But this is all provided that you agree to two conditions," he added.

"There are always conditions with you men, aren't there, Ralph?" she responded, on cue, in her best Alice Kramden voice. "Okay, let's hear 'em..."

"One. No pink little flowery… pink things," he said, feigning a look of anguish, as if Michelle were even the pink-flowery type. As good fortune would have it, her tastes were right in line with his own — clean, modern, streamlined — though she also had a little eclectic streak in her, mixing in an unexpected antique piece here and there. Any eclectic style Tony reflected, on the other hand, was merely the result of someone having gifted him with something that didn't quite jibe with the rest of the room.

"No pink flowers," she readily agreed, thrilled that the vestiges of his past romances were already halfway out the door, and touched that he had thought to do this for her. Before they were married, she'd never given even so much as a fleeting thought about the "history" of his sheets and pillows. Wedding bands must play weird territorial games with the mind, she concluded.

"And, 'two'?"

"Two... No making me haul my butt out of bed in the middle of the night anymore," he said in a slightly more serious tone, tapping a fingertip against her lips to punctuate his point. "I want you to tell me when something's bothering you, y'hear? And not weeks into it, either."

She felt a slight blush return to her cheeks, but kept her eyes fixed on his to acknowledge that his words were indeed registering. She knew she had a tendency to internalize things, but hadn't yet become accustomed to having someone concerned enough to want to pry them out of her. She made a mental note to get better at opening up, particularly when asked, pointblank, what was bugging her.

"Y'hear?" he repeated, tapping her bottom lip again, wanting her verbal agreement.

"I hear," she smiled bashfully, releasing her lock on his eyes and playfully devouring the whole of his finger with her mouth.

"And three—" he said with a slight gasp, the sudden swirling sensation of her warm, wet tongue catching him by surprise.

"Uhhh..." she interrupted, releasing his finger with a soft smack of her lips, "you said two conditions."

A sly, telltale grin slowly crept across his face. She felt the subtle rotation of his hips beneath her and grinned back, just as slyly. Her swirling tongue and wiggling hips had produced the desired affect, now pressing firmly against her. She leaned in and hungrily suckled his lips and licked his tongue, delighting in the low moans and muffled whimpers that emanated from somewhere deep inside his throat. His hands explored the length of her body, as far down as he could reach, kneading and caressing her smooth, taut skin; luxuriating in every delicate curve, cleft and contour; relishing the sultry roundness of her hips as they moved in torturously slow circles, making him crazier with every gyration. His palms smoothed along the sides of her slender waist. He ached to plunge and wallow in her grip, but she wanted to play. Her breasts dug into his chest; her tongue darted mercilessly around his mouth; little kisses and nibbles covered his face. A thin coat of sweat began to dampen their skin.

He dragged his fingertips up her back and felt her body reflexively shudder, sending another electrifying surge of excitement coursing through him. He filled one hand with her thick, silky curls and planted the other at the small of her back, rolling himself over in mid-kiss and coming to rest firmly on top of her. He pried his lips free and skimmed them gently across her cheek over to her ear, pausing to draw some deep breaths before presenting his final condition to her.

"Three," he whispered, in a playfully low, lecherous tone, "that you figure some way to tire me out, since you're the only reason I'm even awake right now, woman."

"Extortion?" she giggled hard. "Pretty desperate of you, Almeida. Isn't it a violation of federal law to seek sexual favors in exchange for rewards?"

"Only at the office, sweetheart," he moaned low and softly into her ear, sinking his knees between hers and gently easing them apart.

"You make a good point," she readily conceded, wedging her hand between their bodies and feeling his stomach muscles tense in anticipation as she snaked her way slowly downward. He gasped as her fingers reached their destination and guided him where she burned to feel him. It would be a long while before he'd find himself drifting off to sleep again.


End file.
